New York Times
by Lynn Rosellini

WASHINGTON, April 18-Judy Roberts tucked a revolver in her evening bag the other night and went out to a glittery dinner party at a downtown restaurant.

“We have to carry our guns in D.C.,” said Miss Roberts, a homicide detective who has become the town’s latest literary celebrity as a result of a new Washington novel based on her experiences. “I went to Ronald Reagan’s inaugural with my shoulder holster strapped under my evening gown.”

As a 10-year veteran of the local police force, the 32-year-old Miss Roberts has been bitten, kicked and scratched by unwilling suspects. She has chased burglars, investigated murders and attended more autopsies than she cares to remember.

When a local author (Warren Adler) suggested that she would make a terrific character in a novel, Miss Roberts replied, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Nuances of Homicide Squad

“I’m serious,” said the novelist, Warren Adler, who had asked the District of Columbia Police Department to help him locate a female detective.

Eventually, Miss Roberts agreed to brief Mr. Adler on the nuances of life on the homicide squad. The result is American Quartet, Mr. Adler’s recently published mystery novel, whose main character is a female homicide detective.

In the tradition of Washington novels, the heroine, Fiona Fitzgerald, not only foils a Presidential assassination plot but also has a love affair with a Congressman.

“I’ve never even had a date with a Congressman,” Miss Roberts says, chuckling, “let alone had one as a boyfriend.”

She is sitting in the living room of her apartment in suburban Virginia, grinning as she describes her life as the only woman permanently assigned to the homicide squad. On the job, Miss Roberts never wears makeup or curls her hair, and she always wears trousers.

But this is her day off, and her face is touched with rouge and framed in brown curls as she talks about the “decadent,” who was “in rigor” with “stab wound through the left aorta.”

How closely does art mirror life, in the case of American Quartet?

“If everything is true in that book,” she says, “I wouldn’t have time to come to work.”

As it turns out, Miss Roberts spends more time with derelicts and thugs than with Congressmen, and more hours in the city morgue than at Georgetown dinner parties. Her working days frequently run around the clock and through weekends. But Miss Roberts says she intends to find the time to collaborate with Mr. Adler on a sequel. “It is a nice break!” she says.